Opportunity NYC

Opportunity NYC was an experimental Conditional Cash Transfer program (CCT) by the Mayor of New York City, Michael Bloomberg. Announced in April 2007, it was the first CCT program to be launched in the United States or any other developed nation. Its initial phases were funded by a number of private partners including The Rockefeller Foundation, Robin Hood Foundation, the Open Society Institute, Starr Foundation, AIG, and Mayor Bloomberg's own Bloomberg Family Foundation. The program is being evaluated by MDRC, a nonprofit research firm, using a random assignment research design. Opportunity NYC is administered by Seedco, a nonprofit community development organization. The program ended on August 31, 2010.

The program hoped to build on the successes of similar programs in Brazil and in Mexico, a 10-year-old aid initiative that has been credited with alleviating Mexico's direst poverty and makes demands on participants while offering small but meaningful cash rewards.

The cash payments go to the family, almost always the mother or other female head of the household. Parents can receive from $40 to $100 a month if they keep up with responsibilities such as taking their children to the doctor or keeping them in school.

The program has three components: an education, health and work component. The education component gave money for certain milestones, including $50/month for 95% high school attendance, $600 for each Regent exam passed by a high school student, and $25 per parent-teacher conference the parents attended. The health component gave money for health related milestones, including $200 for each family member who received a non-emergency checkup from a doctor, and $200 upon completion of a pediatrician advised Early Intervention evaluation for a child under 30 months. The work component gives families $300 for someone working an average of 30 hours/week for 2 months, or between $300–$600 for completing an education or professional training course.

The World Bank, considers that "Conditional cash transfers provide money directly to poor families via a 'social contract' with the beneficiaries – for example, sending children to school regularly or bringing them to health centers. For extremely poor families, cash provides emergency assistance, while the conditionalities promote longer-term investments in human capital."

Those on the right applaud the system because it relies on individual initiative and acts as an investment in the future: Children in the program are healthier, they stay in school longer and they grow up with a better chance to become productive citizens. Those on the left say the program helps stabilize troubled families and gives poor children more consistent access to society's benefits.